Serena JV Elston is a transdisciplinary curator and sculptor contemplating the body and its relationship to structures of power. Her research-based practice explores ecology, posthumanism, disability, and embodiment through a post-colonial lens. At its core, her practice asks, if an institution has the power to disable a body, does the body have the power to disable an institution? Grappling with the identity of disability, she depicts figures in various stages of decomposition and incompleteness. Her work seeks to make visible the precarious materiality of structures to reveal them as inherently temporal.
Serena’s background in architecture and production has been instrumental in the creation of ambitious curatorial projects such as SPACORE—a platform centered around lived experiences within wellness capitalism—and Siren Island, a floating stage reimagining land mythologies through live theater events on the open water. Her work has been exhibited both in the United States and internationally, including at Ever Gold [Projects] in San Francisco, VideoDrome Paris, S.O.F.A. Italy, G99 in Brno, CZ and the MOAH Museum in Lancaster, California. Serena was a finalist for the 2024 Joan Mitchell Fellowship and a recipient of the 2024 City of Chicago (DCASE) Individual Artist Grant, 2024 ArtsMidwest Award for Artists with Disabilities, and an awardee of the 2024 3Arts Ignite Fund.
